Fracture Mechanics
by Road Rhythm
Summary: So it's three a.m. and he's staring up at the ceiling, listening to Sam knife-fighting Castiel outside apparently just for fun.


**Summary:** So it's three a.m. and he's staring up at the ceiling, listening to Sam knife-fighting Castiel outside apparently just for fun.

**Notes:** Implied Sam/Castiel, but can be read as gen. A wee bit nonlinear.

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><p>º º º º<p>

* * *

><p>So it's three a.m. and he's staring up at the ceiling, listening to Sam knife-fighting Castiel outside apparently just for fun.<p>

Dean flops an arm over his eyes. Periodically as the two figures outside it move back and forth, the sliver of light let in where the motel curtains almost meet winks out. Metal rasps over metal, faintly audible under the door's torn weather stripping. Knives and angels, two things Sam has always liked. The parking lot's empty and they're in the middle of nowhere, so, Dean supposes, why the hell not.

Lucifer's intended and a fallen angel pick up knives and go at it by a Motel 6. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

There's a pause from outside, then voices. They aren't raised; they're nonantagonistic and conversational. Then the fighting starts up again.

Dean wonders whether Sam is using Cas as a stand-in for Lucifer. He wonders whether this is training or something else. It bothers him not to be able to tell. He taught Sam hand-to-hand and knives both, has sparred with him all their lives until it became their own private language. He thought he knew all the inflections of Sam within the context of a fight. Listening to him spar with Castiel is a little bit like the day he found out Sam prayed.

He wonders if Sam still does. If so, Dean thinks he might have to punch him.

He punches the pillow, instead, and counts off the seconds in the dark.

º º º º

Cas knows that Sam knows that Cas is pulling his punches. Sam doesn't even seem to mind that much. It's enough, just to be in motion.

The angel blades are not sharp to the touch, but they cut anyway. Castiel reaches past Sam's defenses and pinks him lightly over his stomach. Sam turns, ducks, and comes up under Castiel's guard. He fastens one hand around Castiel's wrist and hauls him in, too close and too tight for attack.

Castiel allows the fingers to stay on him. "You aren't going to ask me to bless you, are you?"

Sam smiles grimly. It's what passes for a laugh, these days, for both of them. Castiel remembers clustering around with the others in the garrison to hear Uriel spin out a tale, remembers admiring his wit. Uriel whom he slew. That's how it is for celestials: six millennia of implacable order, followed by a split-second rush of change.

"I'm pretty sure I'm past that doing me any good," Sam says. "Pretty sure we both are. No, what I need— I need—"

Castiel watches Sam's face. Hand still on Castiel's wrist, Sam guides the knife in and scores it over his side. He makes a sound in the back of his throat.

He looks at Castiel. Castiel looks back and nods slightly. They count off paces and go again.

º º º º

"Hi, Cas."

Sam rolls his head back against the wall while he examines the angel with avid interest. Dean gets the needle under his skin, pinch-faced and flat. He decouples the tip from the syringe and reaches through Castiel's midsection to dump it into a sharps container.

Today is a bad day. This soon after the demise of the wall, it's to be expected. It will pass. He will save Sam yet. He'll do what Dean couldn't.

Sam has slipped his moorings in time. Castiel can tell with only a glance; the arrangement of atoms and chemicals in his brain has partially reverted to what it was some weeks ago, when the Winchesters called him down only to trap him in holy fire. (It does not burn him now.) Dean, Castiel can see in the lattice of his mind, doesn't know that this is Sam's trouble; he only knows that Sam is troubled. It's quite cruel.

"I get it, you know," Sam says quietly. Dean stands with his torso through Castiel's arm, looking at Sam like he's afraid of what his brother will say next.

"Get what, Sam?"

"Why you made the deal with Crowley. I'd have done it. Still would. I'd have lied about it, too: I have. The problem with killing Lilith wasn't _that_ I killed her, or that I hooked up with a demon to do it, or that I betrayed my brother. It's straight-up that it just didn't _work_. That, and that I murdered an innocent woman. That's the thing I'm still doing penance for."

Whatever Dean injected him with (7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-5-phenyl-1,4-benzodiazepin-2(3_H_)-one) is doing its work. Sam grins up at Castiel. "Doesn't matter how old you get. He'll treat you like a child forever if you don't walk away."

"Who will?"

Sam frowns. "God. Dean. Doesn't matter."

Castiel cups his face in a hand that isn't there. He slips his fingers down, across Sam's cheek, over his neck, lower. "I am your God. And you are not my child."

º º º º

He awakes, and Cas is alive and Bobby is alive and it's like there is a God, after all. It's all so fresh and miraculous. _He_ is fresh and miraculous—finally, after all these years. Then, of course, he finds the crack in the foundation. He didn't know he could still be so disappointed. He feels pathetically juvenile, like a kid whose big brother just told him Santa doesn't exist.

He goes around feeling oddly raw and fragile. Something's stiff the way a limb is after an injury, except he doesn't remember _getting_ it. He doesn't remember a lot. There's so much he did, and Dean won't accept that any of it was _Sam_. Sam can't accept that any of it wasn't. He can't not be done with things possessing his body and mind. It's seriously getting old.

Somewhere there must be frustration buried under every cautious feeling he has, but he can't get at it. He bites his lip as he comes to the end of Bobby's shelf. Going by subject, he's got six volumes left over that don't fit anywhere else. Not good enough. Another system. Alphabetical, maybe.

Wings brush up against the edges of his consciousness, but he still starts when Cas says, "Hello, Sam."

Sam swears and picks up the books he dropped. "Jesus, don't do that!"

Castiel is just watching him, serious as always. He looks from the books in Sam's hands to the dust-free shelf where the spines are all aligned within a couple millimeters of each other. "You feign order. It is a symptom of the chaos in your soul."

Sam grits his teeth. "Thanks. Real helpful, Cas."

Castiel takes a book from the shelf and examines it, frowning. Sam realizes suddenly that Cas shouldn't be here, not unless the world's ending, and he looks Cas over for blood or injuries. He hides it about as well as he does when he checks Dean. "What are you doing here? Are you all right?"

"I came to—see how you're doing."

Sam blinks. Castiel is supposed to be fighting a civil war. He shouldn't be here, making a house call on Sam.

"I'm okay," Sam says slowly. "I'm, you know. Life goes on."

Castiel's—Jimmy's—lips turn down at the corners. "Yes, it does. There's that." He replaces the book on Bobby's shelf, which instantly reappears with its contents in the order Bobby originally put them in. Castiel's hand trembles faintly.

"You sure you're okay?" Sam asks, sure that he isn't.

Cas sighs. "It's not going well for me upstairs." He says it like it's something he's said before.

Sam knows the possibility Castiel is alluding to, but he can't really wrap his head around it. That after everything, an unseen hand could simply reach out and right the hourglass again on the Apocalypse is more than whatever fibers of faith he had left could take. Dean has said, "Screw their pissing contest," more than once, because Dean is utterly tapped out, but he doesn't understand. There's a lot Sam doesn't remember, but he remembers merging with Lucifer just fine. He knows that he could never resist a second time, not now that he knows what it's like.

"Anything we can do," he says quietly. It's about six in the morning and no one's awake to hear them. "If—if we can look for something, or—"

Cas shakes his head. "I need clarity," he says. "Once, I would have gone to receive Revelation. That's no longer an option." His eyes flicker up to Sam. "Do you have time for a fight?"

For the first time, Castiel lets Sam pink him with the angel blade, again and again. Sam wonders whether it's real.

º º º º

Sam extends his hand in breathless invitation. Something flashes in his eyes, and with a small, convulsive gesture he makes it a challenge. Not so overawed as he would like to believe himself, then. Castiel takes it.

"Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood." He wraps both his hands around Sam's—one is an acknowledgment; two is comfort—and feels his life flow warm under the skin. It is, strictly speaking, profane, and Castiel hears Uriel's incredulity that he is actually _touching_ this abomination, but he can't see the harm. It isn't as though angels are easily polluted; only the weak need fear.

Castiel makes his handclasp an expression of his faith and love. He is angel enough to receive any of his Father's creatures. Sam, he has the serene knowledge, has his purpose, too.

º º º º

Sam is confirmed in the Catholic Church when he's a sophomore at Stanford. He stands in the nave with a batch of six other late bloomers in a cheap suit and tie while the beaming bishop speaks to them of how they have received the Spirit of holy fear in God's presence, and how the sacrament has marked them permanently and they cannot receive another. "Remember, He has put his mark upon you, and wherever you go in life, He'll be able find you and give you strength." Then they join the line for the altar rail while the choir pipes up with William Blake.

_Little Lamb, who made thee?_

_Dost thou know who made thee?_

At heart, Sam's really more of a Protestant, inasmuch as he likes his interactions with God unmediated and doesn't really think priests are a necessary part of the equation. His family makes their own holy water; it's not like he thinks any magic resides in the hierarchy. The faith he has he cobbled together for himself out of the bits and pieces that surrounded him all his life. Catholicism is familiar. And if he doesn't believe in the absolute necessity of priests, he does believe in ritual.

Sam takes the little cross-stamped wafer and tries not to feel faintly ridiculous. The ritual—like this, in front of a bunch of smiling people and not over grave dirt with something bearing down on him—feels like somebody's else's clothes, and the wafer tastes unremarkable.

_Little Lamb, who made thee?_

_Dost thou know who made thee?_

_Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,_

_Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:_

º º º º

Sam thinks it's a little weird that he's only in two pieces, but one piece starts before Hell and picks up right after it, unbroken. Shouldn't he not be able to remember anything before Hell if he can't remember that? How do you get it all bricked away if there's a pull cord hanging out? Suppression is one thing, but a _wall_ is another. Not that he's an authority, or anything; it's just that if he'd ever thought about it, which previously he hadn't, he would have expected it to work differently—especially given that Death is, surely, the most linear dude in all creation. Perhaps it speaks to some quality of time he hasn't appreciated.

He reflects on this to keep himself from thinking about the way people keep carving him up into pieces.

º º º º

A vacant commercial lot, this time.

Sam chokes his grip on the glinting sword and throws it. It passes harmlessly through cloth. Even fallen, Castiel is at no risk from a man; Sam can fight as hard as he wants.

He wants to fight hard, tonight. They both do. Castiel drags the blade he's lent Sam across the asphalt with his foot and kicks it back. Sam retrieves it and immediately drops into a crouch again, circling.

They skirmish. "Don't you think that if He wanted to be found, He'd have shown up by now?" Sam says.

Castiel glares at him. "First Dean, and now you?"

"Have to be an idiot not to at least think it." Sam feints and Castiel pretends to fall for it. He's learning to couple deception with rapidity.

"I thought you had faith."

"Oh, I believe. I just don't believe that He gives a crap."

"He put you on that plane and scrubbed the contamination that _you_ sought eagerly from your veins."

Sam barks a laugh. "Oh, yeah. Because I really believe in God's plan for me right now. 'Go forth and be Lucifer's cherry ride, my child!'"

Instantly Castiel is at his throat. He pushes Sam up against the fence with the tip of his blade at Sam's jugular. "You may enlist me in your insane plans. You may do as you like. But you _may not_ trifle with my piety."

He presses the knife into Sam's neck just hard enough to prick and slowly pulls in the reins on his anger. Sam's pulse leaps and a physical reaction of fear races over his skin, but he holds Castiel's gaze. He clenches his jaw and just waits. Eventually Castiel takes the blade away. There's a term for it: trust games.

Castiel does not believe that his Father has abandoned them. He does not even question. His Father sees across the span of ages, and everything that has ever been or will ever be is His dominion. Castiel backs off to let Sam attack him again;

He says, "You are not taking Sam Winchester";

He grasps Dean Winchester with his true hands, pulls him from Alistair's grasp, sees him from the inside out and rebuilds him and brands his soul;

He hears Sam call for him and he opens his arms. It happens before he knows he's doing it (he has never done it before) and Sam turns away and his arms are empty;

He begs his brother not to make him slay him;

He harrows Hell and reaches the Cage and reaches in and pulls something out, but he can't see clearly, not Sam, never Sam, and he can't access all of Sam, and he doesn't even know his error until he lands back under that streetlight and the resurrection is a stillborn _fait acompli_; and

Sam comes at him with a knife.

º º º º

Sam stopped praying four nights before he said yes to Ruby. Praying had become an exercise in anger, anyway: he tossed the baseball of his fury as hard and as high into the sky as he could, and in a certain predictable amount of time, it simply fell back down to him, path unaltered. By the time Ruby showed up with a new meatsuit and a certificate of death like a car title, he'd stopped pitching.

It was a conscious and deliberate decision, not to pray anymore, but it wasn't until much later that he knew why it had to be that way. At the time, it was mainly a "screw you," just another finger to the God who took his brother and maybe another layer to the shroud of martyrdom he wrapped about himself (_I will pull down Hell for you. Do you understand me? If no one else is going to get off their ass and do it, I will_). But there was an underlying reason. There was a reason why, when Dean came back and Sam still didn't _pray_ exactly but maybe he occasionally tossed a "hey, so, you know, if You or your Hosts wanted to maybe not leave my brother utterly broken, that'd be great" out the car window into the wind, even that felt hollow. Unworthy.

Exorcisms are, technically, prayers. They call upon the power of God to cast out the unclean spirit within. The trouble with his psychic thing was that he cut God out as a middleman and liked it. It was hubris as he understood it, hubris as he had defined it for himself.

A few times, he tried praying to Castiel. Exactly once did the angel show up. He was remote, unhelpful, but he didn't act like Sam was escaped from under quarantine, and Sam was so pathetically grateful that he was immediately furious with Castiel for making him feel that way. He broke everything, back then.

Then he was scrubbed clean and plonked on a plane (_Yo-Yo-Yosemite Sammmmmmmm_), which really felt very pointed. He could almost imagine the face connected to the godly hand that scooped them up in Ilchester: bored and faintly irritated. Faith seemed hollow when it was practically compulsory. It seemed like mockery when he knew what Heaven really wanted with him.

Still he prayed. Throwing himself into his training and renouncing any hope of salvation had been much easier; to have the audacity to get down on his knees and _repent_ after everything took sac. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. He stopped doing it, eventually. Dean was the only thing he still had faith in, and Dean was the only one whose forgiveness really mattered.

He prayed once more, silently, while Dean helped him run a rope up a pulley, haul the demon's ankles over their heads, open up her arteries, and bleed her. She was their third customer of the day. It was perfunctory.

Now he's back. It's a miracle that seems less and less miraculous the more he pulls at the loose threads. He prays, and Castiel comes and opens his arms to Sam. Except it's not really Castiel, it's _Cas_; and it's not really praying, it's just a phone call.

He doesn't remember. But he knows anyway: in the end, in the Cage, he prayed again. He knows he didn't pray to God.

º º º º

Castiel prays for guidance. Prayer is all that's left to him, since Revelation is gone and maybe always was a sham. It's a humblingly human exercise, but pointless. There's no answer.

Still, he has lingering questions, if not faith, that bears him through the next weeks. The moment that he _knows_ that his Father has abandoned him is the moment that he presses his fingers to Sam's forehead and brings the wall inside crashing down, shattering the crystal into a thousand pieces instead of just two, and this time all of them in pain.

There is no God. There can't be. If He were alive, Castiel knows, He would have stopped him.

He can't just leave the job vacant.

º º º º

They tend to get drunk to deal with the fact that the Apocalypse is nigh. The stuff that's in their budget burns intensely on the way down. Ellen and Jo burned. They sort of made themselves their own hunters' pyre, climbed on it, _and_ set it going by themselves, and Sam finds that a fitting degree of self-reliance. The only thing he and Dean and Bobby and Cas had left to burn was the photograph. Possibly the women would be just as glad not to have Sam handling their remains, considering that he's the one who got them killed.

He and Dean are lying on either bed in the motel room, watching nothing at all on TV and drinking. They aren't trading the bottle back and forth; there are two on the night stand between them. Even they don't actually drink that much, but Dean got them separate bottles.

Sam takes a swig from his, rolls it around in his mouth, lets it sting his gums, and swallows. Would transubstantiaton work on grain alcohol?

"You know why I joined the Catholic Church?" he says, staring up at the ceiling. Dean grunts in reply, but Sam can tell he isn't sleepy. "I wanted to feel like I was a part of something larger."

Suddenly he cracks up. It's one of those where the laughter starts with a long snort through your nose and keeps rolling through your body like an earthquake. He laughs, and he can't stop laughing even when Dean gets up and comes over and shakes him, shakes him, shakes him.

º º º º

He's knife-fighting an angel. He always has been, and he always will be.

º


End file.
